


come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you

by elsaclack



Series: baby, it's cold outside [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: (the same cannot currently be said about the author), F/M, Holiday Traditions, aaaaand jake is definitely not going to die alone, and they can casually kiss in the middle of a movie store, and they can casually talk about their future family, cold weather fluff, holiday inspired fic, projecting? on my fics? it's more likely than you think, pure fluff, they're in love and engaged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-12 08:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12955176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: The worn soles of her Ugg boots scuff along the dingy carpet beneath their feet, and her scarf - now draped over one shoulder - drags along the ground behind her. Her mittens, over-stuffed puffy coat, matching ski pants, and thick wool beanie complete the look; he’s honestly never seen her look more Randy fromA Christmas Storythan she does in this moment.It is without question the cutest thing he’s ever seen in his life.





	1. Chapter 1

“This is the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Amy grumbles to his right.

Jake bites down on the inside of his cheek, failing to hide a smile as he reaches with gloved hands to gently redirect her down a nearby aisle, away from the store’s front door. Outside the windows at his back, the wind is howling; the snow whips around the mostly-dark street almost violently, leaving their fellow New Yorkers bundled up and bowed against the onslaught of winter. Luckily, the store is warm and lit with a rosy glow, and as the feeling begins to return to the end of his nose, he could swear he smells coffee wafting from somewhere toward the registers at the back.

“This was your idea,” he reminds her, watching her unwind her scarf where it’s wrapped around her neck and face. She doesn’t bother looking at him, but her quiet scoff and accompanying eye-roll are unmistakable. He bites back a grin as she begins to trail away, her attention already focused on the shelves before them. “I was the one who suggested we wait until next weekend to do this -”

“You and I both know they’d be out of all the good ones by then,” she interrupts distractedly. The worn soles of her Ugg boots scuff along the dingy carpet beneath their feet, and her scarf - now draped over one shoulder - drags along the ground behind her. Her mittens, over-stuffed puffy coat, matching ski pants, and thick wool beanie complete the look; he’s honestly never seen her look more Randy from  _A Christmas Story_  than she does in this moment.

It is without question the cutest thing he’s ever seen in his life.

“Besides,” she pauses, hand hovering over a shelf, “the blizzard’s supposed to hit on Friday right around the time we get out of work - it wouldn’t be safe.”

“I wouldn’t’ve minded doing this without you,” he says, hands folded behind his back. “You could’ve stayed home and been my personal space heater when I got back -”

“Not a chance, Peralta,” she interrupts coolly.

“Why not?” He pokes her arm, grinning when she shoots him a playful warning look over her shoulder.

“First of all, I don’t trust you to pick any good ones. Your taste is questionable at the absolute best.”

“I resent that,” he says, a touch indignantly. They’ve migrated down to the end of the first aisle. “I have  _excellent_ taste. I picked  _you_ , didn’t I?”

“You keep telling yourself that, buddy,” she murmurs, scanning over the selections facing them on an endcap. “Just pretend like my ‘screw light and breezy’ speech never happened…”

He can’t help but to laugh at that - however begrudgingly. “Fine, fine, you  _coerced_ me into picking you -” this earns him a smack to the upper arm and a haughty glare (accented by a poorly-restrained grin) “- but the fact remains that I do have good taste, since I initiated things.”

She pauses two paces into the second aisle, her head tilted back at an angle to arch an unimpressed brow at him. “Okay, fine, you initiated things. Happy?”

He tilts forward and brushes the end of his nose against hers. “Very.”

A bright grin blossoms across her face, but she turns away from him far too quickly, returning her attention to the shelves. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, bud,” she murmurs. “Anyways, no, I couldn’t have stayed home - this is my tradition. A real-life certified Santiago tradition. It doesn’t count if I’m not here.”

He relents, too mesmerized by the single fleck of snow that has yet to fully melt in her hair to even consider trying to come up with a solid come-back. She pulls one case from the wall and scans the back cover before seeming to notice his sudden silence; when she turns toward him, her curiosity is clear and bright and enchanting in her big shining eyes.

“What’s the matter, Peralta?” she asks, a bit of cheekiness flooding into her expression. “Have my good looks finally gotten the better of you?”

He thinks of the engagement ring nestled on the third finger on her left hand beneath her mitten - of the way her hair lays when it spills over the perimeter of her pillow onto his - of the way it feels when she sags against his side after she falls asleep early on the couch. “Well, yeah,” he shrugs, “but that happened a long time ago.”

A genuine smile softens her features, and then she’s stepping into his space with the case still in her hand to push up to the balls of her feet. He steadies her with a hand on her side, a familiar explosive kind of warmth lighting him up from the inside out as she slides her hands - still clad in those thick mittens - up over his chest and up to his face. Sometimes he forgets just how thoroughly her kisses affect him; sometimes he forgets he gets to do this for the rest of his life.

And sometimes, the awareness of it all hits him like a speeding freight train and it’s all he can do to keep from toppling right over.

She doesn’t retreat completely once their lips have lost contact, choosing to hover, hands smoothing leisurely down his chest. “You’re pretty cute yourself, you know,” she murmurs, and he grins - partially at the compliment, but also at the way her voice seems to have dropped just slightly in pitch.

(Sometimes he forgets that he affects her just as much as she affects him.)

The front door opening to the sounds of shrieking children jolts them; They exchange a rather rueful grin as Amy steps an appropriate distance away. Jake doesn’t let her get far, though - he catches her hand in his and squeezes gently just as a pair of seven-year-old twins come barreling around the corner.

“Y’know, I honestly didn’t even know video stores were still a thing,” Jake murmurs as they make their way to the end of the second aisle. “Like, I guess I knew in theory, but I just assumed they kind of went extinct when Blockbuster went under.”

“I can assure you, my brothers are single-handedly responsible for keeping this one alive,” she glances back at the twins distractedly, before a movie on the shelf to his right seems to catch her attention. He takes a step back dutifully, watching the way her eyes flick across the cover so quickly they’re nearly a blur. He wonders, briefly, why she’s even bothering to read it - it’s  _Elf_ , he knows for a fact she’s seen it at least five times - but he knows better than to question her. So he just waits, rubbing his thumb over hers absently, and reaching out dutifully when she turns to hand him the DVD.

“One down, seven to go,” she declares with a grin.

All in all, it takes them about an hour to work their way through the entire store. By the time they meander down the last aisle, Jake’s got a basket in one hand with copies of _Elf, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Polar Express, Scrooged_ , and  _Miracle on 34th Street_  tucked inside. He’s just formulating his third argument for why replacing  _The Polar Express_  with  _Die Hard_  is a good idea (“The hyper-realistic animation gives me  _nightmares_ , babe!”) when the twins from earlier come rushing up behind them, overtaking the two of them to rush at the counter where a frazzled woman who appears to be their mother is enjoying the complimentary coffee. Amy slows and stops beside him, tugging on his hand to bring him back closer after he took a faltering step forward without her. “Everything okay, babe?” he murmurs over the raucous voices ahead of them.

“Yeah,” she says, gaze flickering over the scene unfolding before them (the twins are bartering with their mother to replace their allotted two movies with one video game). “Just - memories.”

She’s still staring at the little family in front of them, but as Jake steps a little closer to her he recognizes the wistful look in her eye. “Did the twins try stuff like that when you guys were kids?”

She huffs out a little laugh. “Not with video games. But, yeah, they’d each try to trade their movies in on the baseball cards they sold by the registers. Even when they were teenagers.” She shakes her head, an affectionate smile on her face. “They didn’t stop until they were in college. It was like, all of a sudden they loved the tradition. Going to Blockbuster with the whole family was their favorite part of being home for the holidays.”

They watch the twins barter with their mother for a few more moments, before their mother hisses something that looks equal parts irritated and final, sending the twins slinking back down the aisle pas them, shoulders slumped in defeat. Jake and Amy exchange an amused smirk once the twins are past, before continuing toward the registers.

“Did you ever try to trade your movie in on something else?” he asks as he hefts their basket up on the countertop.

He expects an immediate and vehement denial, but Amy seems to genuinely think about it for a moment. “Once,” she says as she extracts her wallet from her pants pocket (apparently when it’s below twenty-five degrees, a purse is just out of the question). “Jason told me if I could convince our parents to let me trade my movie in for extra candy, he’d pick my favorite movie instead of his.”

There’s a knowing, rueful grin on her face that answers his unvoiced question - but he asks it anyways. “Did it work?”

“Of course not,” she hands the cashier her card with a polite smile before turning her attention back to Jake. “It ended up getting Jason in huge trouble, actually. He thought for sure he was getting coal in his stocking.”

Jake snorts. “I’ve never understood that tradition. Why coal?”

“I…I don’t know, actually,” she says, brow furrowed. “I’ve never really thought about it. That is weird.”

The cashier hands Amy’s card back, and after only a moment of rearranging, she gets it tucked back into her wallet and her wallet tucked back into her pocket. Jake takes the bag off the counter with one hand and steps back, watching Amy rewind her scarf around her neck, before taking her hand and starting the slow meander back toward the door. He can see the twins huddled together at the end of a nearby aisle - near where  _The Grinch_  is on display, he thinks - and a bubble of warmth rises up his chest. “D’you think our kids are gonna try it when they’re old enough?” he asks as they pass the twins.

It’s hard to tell, since he can only see about 20% of her face, but he’s pretty certain her entire face has flushed a brilliant red. Excitement suddenly surges through his veins - even with the engagement ring on her finger and the wedding binder growing steadily fatter by the day on their coffee table, talk of their future together never fails to elicit this kind of (downright  _adorable_ ) reaction from her. “With our combined genes?” she asks weakly once she seems to have recovered a little. “Definitely.”

He laughs, shaking his head slightly. “Yeah, we’re pretty much screwed, aren’t we?”

“Mhmm,” she hums, shuffling a little closer as they near the front door. “Screwed is definitely the word I was just thinking of.”

He turns back to look at her - swaddled and barely visible, but still the most beautiful person he’s ever seen - and then drags her in by the hand to plant a kiss on her forehead over her beanie. “ _So_ screwed,” he murmurs when she rocks backwards. Her eyes twinkle with an unseen smile. “Let’s just hope they get my tolerance for the cold.”

He shoulders the front door open with a broad grin, and her retort is lost in a wail of despair muffled into the fibers of her scarf.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i guess i'm starting another one-shot collection??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had a weird fever dream the other day that went something like this so here have this equally weird fic
> 
> also!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’m freezing at this exact second in time!!!!!!!!!! wishing someone would build a fire!!!!!!!!!!!! it’s 27 degrees (-2 celcius) outside and let me tell u i’m in no way!!! equipped!!! to handle this!!! anyways,

He finds her laying on her side on the bedroom floor.

Objectively, the sight should be alarming, considering that’s most definitely not where he left her earlier that morning. As it is, Jake merely smirks, his movements strong and never faltering as he shrugs his hoodie off. He’d seen the evidence that she’d been up and moving around the apartment in the hours he’d been at work as soon as he walked through the front door - blankets strewn across the couch, mail shuffled and abandoned on the kitchen counter, stray tissue boxes on random surfaces, and an open, empty bottle of Advil lying on its side on the coffee table. Her position on the floor is a little unorthodox, but not altogether surprising. He still remembers the time he found her drunkenly dozing on the bathroom floor after all (at the peak of summer, claiming the tile was made of ice and she was on the verge of melting).

Amy’s back is toward him but he can see her arm moving in a slow rhythm - probably drawing patterns in the small shag rug at the foot of their bed - and aside from the slight turn of her head, she doesn’t acknowledge his arrival. The apartment is warm, a welcome reprieve to the bitter cold bartering for entrance at their windows, and even though he can see the snow falling thick and swirling in the space between their curtains he can feel the warmth trickling down his fingers and toes.

“Hey,” he says, voice almost boisterous in the comfortable silence swaddling them both. She turns toward him a little more, peering at him through her lashes - and now he can see the pinkness around her nose has spread over her cheeks and darkened to an angrier color, the used, crumpled tissues like confetti on the floor over the top of her head. “Why’re you on the floor?”

She whines - a quiet, pathetic little thing - and closes her eyes. “Warmer,” she whispers, and he almost has to strain to hear her over the heater humming somewhere over his head. Warm air spills into the room through two seperate vents, feathery light along the back of his neck as he unwinds his scarf and tosses it haphazardly to the floor behind him - again, smirking all the while, distantly wondering if some childhood something had her subconsciously equating the floor with temperature regulation.

“Warmer than the bed?” he asks patiently, shuffling over her legs to pull his sock drawer open. His snow-caked boots are sitting in a neat pile in a bucket by the door and his leather jacket hangs from his designated hook - dripping with melting snow, directly contrasting with her warm and dry coat hanging two inches to the left - and even though the feeling is beginning to return to his furthest extremities, he practically shivers with relief when he pulls three pairs of thick, woolen socks from the farthest depths of his sock drawer.

Amy, for all her usual quick wit, has yet to even react to his latest question. He perches at the foot of the bed and watches her eyes roll beneath their lids as he quickly works the first pair of socks over the socks he’d worn to work that day, the faintest spark of worry igniting for only a brief moment in his chest.

Her bone-rattling cough deepens his worry, though not too dramatically - he merely slides off the foot of the bed, settling cross-legged at her feet, and begins working his second pair of socks over her feet as she settles back into stillness. She’s already wearing these thin athletic socks, but when he lifts her foot up and her flannel pajama bottoms slide a bit further down her leg, he can feel just how frigid her skin is. A crease appears between her brows and she groans - just as quiet and pathetic as her earlier whine - but he presses on with nothing more than a roll of his eyes.

Once he has both pairs of socks over her feet he inches closer, ghosting his hand up her leg before coming to a stop at her hip. “Ames,” he says as softly as she can. She doesn’t move. “C’mon, babe, you gotta get back in the bed.”

“Floor’s so warm,” she murmurs, eyes splitting open sluggishly. He frowns - she’s not wrong. The apartment beneath theirs must have a furnace in their bedroom or something. “Bed’s so cold.”

“Well, it won’t be cold if I lay down with you.”

She whines again, reaching down to shove his hand away from her hip, but he’s too quick for her - in an instant he has a grip around her hand, tugging gently, urging her to stand. “ _No_ ,” she moans, trying and failing to yank her hand from his grasp. “Gonna get sick. Just five - five more minutes.”

He pauses. “Five more minutes and you’ll get in bed?”

Her eyes flutter closed as she nods.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

His hesitation only lasts another moment. “I’m getting a pillow,” he grumbles.

Within minutes, they’re situated at the foot of their bed, sprawled out on the shag rug with her warmest sweater-knit blanket tucked in tight around their figures and a pillow cushioning his head. Hers lies secure in his arms, curled around her in a loose embrace - enough to surround her in the warmth radiating from his chest, but not so tight that she can’t breathe. She’s asleep almost instantly, breath coming light and warm through her parted lips, washing up against his chest through his shirt. Her closeness combined with the warmth radiating up through the floor is intoxicating enough to tug at his eyelids, the temptation to sleep growing larger with each passing moment. Days at the precinct without her there have always passed more slowly; add that to the truly miserable weather he’d trekked through eight times that day, and he’s lucky he didn’t up and crash on the break room couch halfway through his shift.

“I missed you today,” he whispers, reaching with the arm not curled beneath her head to gently stroke her hair. “Work sucks without you.”

She snuffles quietly in her sleep, and his heart throbs hard with affection.

“ _Life_ sucks without you,” he amends once the affection has passed and his ability to speak has returned. “’M glad we’re getting married. I love you. Gross cold and all.”

He chuckles quietly to himself, craning his neck to kiss her forehead - the only part of her he’s been allowed to kiss for the last three days - before settling down into his pillow and closing his eyes, mentally starting a timer for five minutes.

(Six hours on the floor garners one killer cramp in his lower back and a damp patch on his sleeve he teases her endlessly over. It also results in Amy being in marginally higher spirits - something for which he’s endlessly thankful.)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading guys and happy holidays!!


End file.
